In our ever-forming church community, stories are becoming the rhythm by which we live, breath, and understand our day to day lives. Jesus lived the world's greatest story. Jesus told the most interesting, enduring, and enlivening stories. By his love, we want to live and tell the same stories.

In our first season gathering together, we have been going through a sermon series called the "Story of God". This series has focused on Jesus' story in the Holy Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation; and how we can find our story in God's grand story. By looking at Jesus' love, grace, and presence in The Bible, we have continued to find our identity as a community whose story is inextricably tied to the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and everlasting presence of our Lord on the throne. This is the gospel. This is good news!

Stories Matter

Together, we have been leaning into the importance of sharing our own stories. Everyone's story matters! Whether our stories have been easy, unbearable, or somewhere in between; there is no person whose story does not matter to God. As a result, everyone's story should matter to us. Jesus shows his care for all of us, as we share and hear the many different ways we have experienced Him working in our lives. He has faithfully drawn close to us in our pain, has saved us from brokenness, and has moved mightily in and through our lives. This is the source of our hope. The God of the universe being Lord of all, yet deeply caring about who we are. Each and everyone of us.

The late Tupac Shakur once wrote a beautiful poem as a high school student in New York City, and titled it "The Rose That Grew From Concrete". He asked and hoped for the following:

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?Proving nature's law's wrong it learned to walk without having feetFunny it seems, but by keeping its dreams it learned to breathe fresh airLong live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared

Jesus is the rose. He is bursting forth in the world through the dark, cold, and cracked concrete of our lives. He faithfully lived a sinless life, and bestowed righteousness to us through his death and resurrection. When no one else cared, and even we didn't care, he broke down the walls of brokenness between us and reconciled us to God. And his story didn't just stop there.

Even now, He is making all things new (Revelation 21:4) and refuses to let us believe the lie that our stories are written in unbreakable cement. He is new life bursting forth and is on a cosmic rescue mission to affirm us of his love, heal us from our pains, and to restore us into the beauty that we were created for. We are his children, and like any great parent, he wants to hear and know our stories...our beautiful, easy, difficult, broken, redeemed, and hopeful stories.

In the next couple weeks we are going to look at elements of our story in God's story. Please feel free to subscribe to our community newsletter to stay with us as we tell stories that help us to find Jesus in our stories: